Asset-Stripping

What kind of rubbish is this? An online newspaper I read just published an article about an article in a print newspaper called The Australian. Since when was quoting another news outlet's opinions considered news?

The piece in The Australian - a newspaper famous here for being a mouthpiece of the Rupert Murdoch view of life and a front-runner in his stable's race to the bottom -  was about how low the planned Chinese carbon tax would be and how high the Australian one is and how "out of step" with the world our carbon tax is.

And what a surprise, a Murdoch-owned newspaper doesn't like Australia's carbon tax. Big deal. Murdoch and his cronies in the mining, coal and oil industries can spout off all they like, his opinions are hardly news any more and I'm sick of hearing them over and over from all the newspapers and TV and radio stations he owns.

The fact is, China's move to a carbon tax (however low they've started) is the most important and significant event since the Kyoto treaty was signed. It's a major triumph and I'm sure Australia's dramatic recent move had an influence. The whingers at the Australian should remember that China has already made big steps towards becoming a 21st Century, clean economy. This is another one.

If the West wants to keep up, we need to force our old industries to change - and fast. They won't do it themselves. These old, polluting dinosaurs will drag Australia down to Third World status if we let them. And when they've asset-stripped Australia, they'll move on to their next victim.

Osama Bin Laden is Dead

So what?

Here are a few early thoughts on what it might mean that the "world's most wanted man" has finally been tracked down and executed.

1. You live by the sword, you die by the sword. Bin Laden was waging war. Sometimes wars don't go the way you'd like them to and, even when you're a big-shot general, sitting safely in your stronghold, well away from the fighting, sometimes the enemy gets to you and kills you. Them's the breaks. Bin Laden dropped a plane on the Pentagon. The Pentagon dropped a Navy Seals team on Abbottabad.

2. It's made many Americans very happy. Let's face it, Americans went nuts after 9/11. They thrashed about in a frenzy of outrage, fear and frustration. They invaded Iraq for Pete's sake! How crazy was that? Yet the fear was the worst bit of it. Americans became obsessed with the idea that their enemies could reach out and get them and it terrified them. It was shocking and horrible. It went against everything they believed about their superiority and invulnerability. And much of that fear was focused on Osama Bin Laden. He was the one who had hurt them. He was the one who, for ten whole years, dodged their best efforts to wreak their vengeance. So, of course, now he's dead, some of that sense of dread and impotence has been lifted. No wonder they're dancing in the streets.

3. With any luck, President Obama will enjoy a 'halo effect' from being the president in office when Bin Laden was shot. Yes, many American's think he's a Muslim, and a socialist, and a foreigner, but now they also know he's the guy who brought down the Boogey Man. American conservatives probably have a much lower chance now of winning the election next year. This is a very good thing, especially considering the absolute clowns who have been suggested as GOP candidates - like Palin and Trump. If killing Bin Laden gets Obama a second term, at least some genuine good will have come of it.

4. Stock markets - especially the American ones - rose for a short while there. They've fallen back again, of course, but hopefully that little blip will show everyone how ludicrous the whole stock trading system has become. When our global economy depends on idiots who spend higher on stocks because some terrorist fly has been swatted, we really need to take a long hard look at what is going on in the free market economy.

Saints Alive!

You know what? You don't cure cancer with magic. You cure it with medical procedures. You take thousands of scientists, thousands of doctors, and they work on the problen night and day for decades and decades. They train for the best part of a decade, they devote their lives to chipping away at this monstrous problem, they spend their whole careers doing it, just so they can pass a few, precious scraps of new knowledge down to the next generation of scientists and doctors.

And, after decades of intense, worldwide recearch, the results start to come. When I was a child, cancer was a death sentence. If you had it, you asked, "How long have I got?" These days, the rate of curing cancer is about 50%. If you get it you ask, "Can it be fixed?" It's one of the triumphs of our age that we have come so far in fighting this hideous disease.

So it really pisses me off that the Catholic church, has canonised an Asutralian woman because she cured cancer by a miracle. A miracle! Those fat cat bishops, controlling vast fortunes, running an organisation that has only last week scandalised us all by its sexual abuse of small children in Germany, have said that this woman cured cancer by magic!

Magic!

Well, I'm sorry. You don't cure cancer by magic. You cure it by applying brilliant minds and inconceivable amounts of hard work and resources for year after year after year. That's how you do it. You don't cure cancer by magic! And it's an insult to all those men and women who have worked so hard all their lives to even suggest that you do.

If the Catholic bishops really want to do something about cancer, they should give up their silly mumbo-jumbo canonisation rituals, stop talking crap about magic cures, sell some of their staggeringly huge assets, and invest the money in cancer research. That might actually help someone.

My First Novel is on Sale Now!

At last, it’s February 15 New York time, and Once Upon a Bookstore, my publisher’s own online bookshop, is selling copies of TimeSplash.

Get your copy here

Please, everybody, pass on this message. Retweet it, Digg it, Stumble it, and tell all your friends on Facebook. You can even mention it to people in real life, if you like.

And, if you do me the great honour of buying it and reading it, I’m dying to hear what you think of it.

(If you haven’t heard me talking about TimeSplash before and don’t know what I’m talking about, here is the website of the book that tells you everything you will ever need to know. And if you find you need to know more than that, there is also a blog of the book. Enjoy!)

Irish Government Throttles Free Speech

Hello, and welcome to 2010! Or should that be 1010? I'm a bit confused. The Irish government has just extended its blasphemy laws, you see, taking the world just a step farther back towards the Dark Ages.

Fortunately, not all the Irish are insane - just the government. Some are actively opposing this new law and the constitutional basis for it. Have a look at the Atheist Ireland website for more information, including their deliberate attempt to provoke a prosecution from the government.

You know, I really hate people telling me what I can't say - especially governments and religious nuts.

And, just in case you thought the people who introduced this new law were sincere, God-fearing fundamentalists, here's a quote from Micheal Martin, Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs, opposing attempts by Islamic States to make defamation of religion a crime at UN level, 2009:

“We believe that the concept of defamation of religion is not consistent with the promotion and protection of human rights. It can be used to justify arbitrary limitations on, or the denial of, freedom of expression. Indeed, Ireland considers that freedom of expression is a key and inherent element in the manifestation of freedom of thought and conscience and as such is complementary to freedom of religion or belief.”

Governments and hypocrisy, eh? Who'd have thought?

The Price of Christmas

I see that a priest in York, England has recommended that his parishioners steal the things they need this Christmas since no-one else is going to help them out. Is conspiracy to commit a mortal sin a sin too? The theology could get tricky. However, the humanity is plain and simple. The plight of the homeless in the UK - while not nearly so bas as that of the homeless in the USA - is heart-wrenching. No decent person can witness it without revolting against the system that creates and sustains it.

And that system is capitalism.

Christmas may be a good time to remember that there is no such thing as a free lunch. The food heaped on our plates, the mostly-unwanted gifts, the treats and indulgences, the lights and the shiny, plastic baubles, all have to be paid for.

In a capitalist society, the payment is made by the consumer - you and me - from money we get by selling our labour to the people who control the capital. They get their money by selling the product of our labour back to us in the form of meals, plastic baubles and so on. The magic of capitalism is that, by this process, capital increases. Somehow value is added by the act of production. Where does it come from?

It comes from various kinds of exploitation, but two in particular: the exploitation of workers, and the exploitation of the environment. Workers are exploited by not paying them anything like the value of their product would suggest they should be paid. The excess goes to the owners of the capital. These days, when workers in the consuming countries ask to be paid more fairly, their jobs, and the exploitation, are moved overseas to places where workers are paid even less and can be more thoroughly exploited. That this leaves people with no source of income because they have lost the ability to sell their labour, might be seen as a bad thing, but for capitalism it is good, it means that labour becomes a plentiful commodity that can now be bought more cheaply. (This is also one of the reasons why capitalists like population growth.) It means that the workers who were once in danger of earning enough that they were no longer so badly exploited, but who lost their jobs, are now forced get new jobs at lower wages and be properly exploited again. To keep capital growing, exploitation of workers has to be increasingly efficient and widespread. It is called 'productivity'.

Even so, you can only take the exploitation of workers so far before the rate of increase declines. For capital to keep on growing you have to keep pumping new wealth into the system. That's where the environment comes in. Along with people's work, the environment is the source of all wealth. Fuels and materials dug from the ground, animals and plants taken or farmed in the seas and on the land, are the raw feedstock of capitalism. To keep capital growing, the people with access to these resources, must keep acquiring them in ever-larger amounts. The consumption of raw materials by our 'primary industries' is nothing less than the consumption of our planet. With increasing speed, capitalism is taking whatever is usable from the world, using it to fuel growth, and dumping the rest as polluting slag - on the land, in the seas, and in the air. What's more, like the exploitation of workers, the exploitation of the environment must also be driven to ever-greater efficiency.

It is clear to everyone who thinks about these things, that capitalism cannot survive forever - or even for very much longer - without finding more things to exploit. The 'global market' has now, pretty much included every possible worker on the planet in capitalism's web of exploitation. There is plenty of of opportunity for growth there still, but the resource - us - is finite. The environment is starting to show signs of breaking down under the strain. Global warming, peak oil, extinctions of fish stocks, and global food shortages, are all signs that we are using up what is there at an unsustainable rate.

Technology has always been capitalism's friend. The need for more efficient exploitation has always driven technological development. The people who control capital - and the people who depend on its products - are in a precarious position just now. It looks as if the environment might collapse, or run out of key materials, before technological fixes have been found for these problems. We need new places to exploit - the asteroids? other planets? - before this one runs dry. We need ways to keep the environment patched up long enough to bring these new resources online. And, we need more efficient ways to exploit labour (global recessions are good for capitalism, but they do carry the risk of revolution.)

Capitalism is great for the owners of capital, it's not bad for many of the rest of us either (as long as we temper its worst excesses with democracy,) but it isn't a free lunch. In the end, we will have to pay the price for all this wealth.

Some, like the homeless, the people on welfare, and the working poor, already pay that price for us. It is by putting a certain proportion of us in such misery that capitalism ensures the low cost of labour and hence adequate returns on investment for the owners of capital. The suffering of the starving and the homeless in our cities is helping to put the lights on our trees, the iPods in our pockets, and the piles of food on our plates this Christmas.

Is it really so bad if they snatch a can of ravioli from a supermarket shelf in their desperation?

Sea-Walls and Dykes Are Not The Answer

The Australian government is considering measures that would force property owners close to the sea to give up their properties if threatened by coastal erosion or repeated flooding. It is estimated that about 80% of Australians live by the coast. The figure is not so high for other countries but everywhere faces the same problem: global warming is causing sea levels to rise, possibly by as much as 2 to 4 metres in the next fifty years. Coastlines are being eroded and flooded and it will get worse and worse.

Of course, property owners are incensed. There has been a recent 'sea change' rush to the coast and coastal properties have soared in value over the past decade. Owners believe the government should build coastal defences. Failing that, they believe the government should compensate them in full if it pulls them off their land.

Here's what I think. Anyone moving to the coast in the past 10 years must have been off their heads. Anyone investing in coastal properties in the last ten years has made a truckload of money but now the party is over. We've known for a very, very long time that global warming was happening and that sea-level rises were inevitable. If people want to gamble on global warming not happening then that's fine, but it's a gamble they have lost. Tough luck. Maybe next time they'll buy an ostrich farm.

Anyone who has continued to live on the coast despite the sure and certain knowledge that sea levels are going to rise, is also nuts. How many times have they moved house in the past 20 years? How many opportunities have they had to move inland? And now they want the government (i.e. you and me) to build futile sea defences, or to pay them to move elsewhere?

I don't think so.

A compassionate government should provide rehousing assistance to the feeble-minded or gamblers who end up with nothing. As a nation, Australia needs to build more low-rent housing anyway. But no-one forced anyone to buy investment properties near the beach and throw up monstrous high-rises. No-one forced well-off city-dwellers to grab up coastal properties and build million-dollar houses there, turning every seaside town into a yuppie retirement community.

And no-one can force the tax payer to bail all these gamblers and fools out now their 'investment' has turned bad. Surprise, surprise! Climate change is real. Even at the beach you can't bury your head in the sand forever.

Good on ya Joanna

I was born just ten years after World War 2 ended. I was raised in Hull in Yorkshire, a major fishing and cargo port and one of the worst-bombed cities in England. When I was a kid, my friends and I played 'Jerrys and English' in the bombed out ruins of buildings still not yet rebuilt. Every adult male I knew back then had been in the army or the navy. All my friends' fathers, and all their grandfathers too. My own paternal grandfather was bed-ridden all the time I knew him because of injuries sustained in the war.

I don't know how kids view war these days. I imagine they don't see it in the way we did. Since World War 2, wars have become shabbier and less honourable. The disgraceful invasion of Iraq makes even Vietnam seem marginally reasonable. Yet everyone I knew as a child was proud of what we did in World War 2. We had stood firm against oppression. We had saved the world from tyranny. We had been brave and strong.

And among all the many stories I heard in those days, of bravery and courage and skill, the stalwart loyalty and fierce bravery of the Gurkhas was often mentioned.

I think, like many other Brits, I was astonished to discover that Gurkhas who had served in the British Army Brigade of Gurkhas had no automatic right to settle in Britain on leaving the army. I was also shocked to discover that a sly deal at the time of Partition had left the Gurkhas with a reduced pension compared to other British Army servicemen.

For some years now, there has been a campaign to achieve better rights for Gurkha ex-servicemen. Small wins have happened from time to time but the big battle - for their right to settle in Britain - has only just been won. After a surprise 'first day motion' defeat for the Government (the first since 1978) the British Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, announced that "All Gurkha veterans who retired before 1997 with at least four years service will be allowed to settle in the UK". As Nick Clegg, a UK politician quite rightly said, it was "a victory for decency" and "the kind of thing people want this country to do."

Certainly it is what people of my generation would want, people who heard the admiration and respect in the voices of our forebears when they spoke of the brave and loyal Gurkhas.

But there is still work to be done on the Gurkha's behalf. We still need to ensure that Gurkha Brigade veterans receive full pensions in the UK. But, as 'Gurkha Justice Campaign' lawyer David Enright says, "that is for tomorrow". Today, he and other campaign leaders - including figurehead and active campaigner Joanna Lumley, whose father was an officer in a Gurkha regiment - are celebrating yesterday's tremendous victory.

Thinking It Through Fail

Last Wednesday, the World Health Organisation pushed its pandemic alert status for the recent swine flue outbreak up to 'five' (out of six). As far as the WHO is concerned, then, a pandemic is imminent.

The Australian government (and many others around the world) has its own pandemic plan which is keyed to the WHO alert levels. At 'five' various announcements should be made and actions taken under this plan. One of these is for Australians to stock up on food, water, household supplies, and basic medicines so that each household could last a fortnight without them.

Now this is obviously a recipe for triggering panic buying on a national scale, probably accompanied by punch-ups at checkouts and little old ladies being trampled to death in the rush to buy bags of sugar and other essentials. So the government has said that it won't be instigating this part of its (clearly stupid) plan. Presumably they will wait until the alert level hits 'six' and a pandemic is actually underway before they mention that people should have been stockpiling food so as to avoid the food riots that will then be starting up in all the major cities.

In fact, I suppose, like all governments everywhere, they are quietly hoping it won't come to that, that the pandemic won't happen, and that this is all a storm in a petri dish. Maybe they think that having your head in the sand is the best protection against viruses.

The fact remains, however, that the plan they have is rubbish. If a pandemic hits (and WHO thinks it is imminent) there will be food shortages, there will be shortages of all kinds of commodities. The government's plan for everybody to stock up against such an event is probably quite a good idea. Trouble is, they didn't think it through, did they? With typical stupidity, their thought processes only got so far and then petered out.

If you're going to announce, at alert level five, that every Australian should stock up for a fortnight, then at, oh level two or three, say, you should probably compel all the supermarkets to stock up for the big rush that's coming. That would be reasonable, wouldn't it? After all, in these days of just-in-time buying, the supermarkets and their suppliers are only keeping about three days of supplies. That's why everyone buying a fortnight's worth is such a problem. The supermarkets and even the wholesalers, would be cleaned out instantly with no chance of re-stocking.

Not only would it be impossible for people to buy a fortnight's worth of food, after the first lot had tried, there would be nothing at all for everybody else. It would be a catastrophe.

But how could the government compel the supermarkets to stock up for the level five announcement when the wholesalers don't have that much stock? How could the wholesalers stock up when many of the producers couldn't provide their produce fast enough? (They too are working on a just-in-time basis don't forget.) And then there's the question of compensation. If the government forces the suppliers to over-supply and the retailers to over-stock, what happens if the level five alert never happens?

In fact, whatever dimwit wrote that requirement into the government's pandemic plan (probably an extremely expensive consultant from one of the big consultancies) ought to be sacked. He or she is clearly an idiot.

Must stop now, I've got to get off to the shops before the breakfast cereal is all gone.

First Puppy: The Motion Picture

I despair. President Obama's dog now has its own series of books for children.

Why do I despair?

1. Because people refer to this pooch as 'The First Puppy'. Doesn't that just make you want to throw up? It's not the dog's fault, of course. If the Obamas had bought a tortoise we'd have books about the First Damned Tortoise instead.

2. The world is full of aspiring writers, some of them writing very good books that will never be published because the world's publishing houses just don't have the capacity to publish every good book that is written. One of the reasons they don't have the capacity is because they're publishing crappy, ghost-written celebrity memoirs, celebrity cook-books, celebrity novels, and, now, stupid celebrity dog stories!

3. The 'vast majority' of the Obama family's US$2.5 million annual income comes from the sale of his own celebrity memoir! No doubt the First Tortoise's contribution will take this income up considerably - especially when the film rights are sold.

4. People are idiotic enough to buy these books. (And, no, I'm not going to give you a link. If you really want to find them, Google on "stupid dog books for the mentally disabled".)

Jobs, Justice and Climate

In the UK yesterday, Trades Union Congress general secretary, Brendan Barber, said this to world leaders assembling for the G20 summit meeting next week. "The old ideas of unregulated free markets do not work, and have brought the world's economy to near-collapse, failed to fight poverty and have done far too little to move to a low-carbon economy."

The Metropolitan Police estimate that 35,000 people marched through London on the 'Put People First' demonstration, the first of many events planned for the G20 summit. Put People First's slogan is "jobs, justice and climate".

With civil unrest growing across Europe as job losses mount and the recession bites ever harder, I really hope that the G20 leaders are listening. We've had decades of unfettered greed and government-backed corporate callousness, the rich have got richer and the poor have starved. The fiction that 'economic growth' will filter down to the poorest and make everybody better off has been exposed, and the future is looking bleak for working people everywhere as the value of their pensions has halved in a single year.

We might struggle through this recession but worse ones are coming. Peak oil is nearly upon us. Climate change is now unstoppable. The population is still growing and resources are still dwindling. Economic growth has natural limits and we are reaching them. Managing global capitalism requires more skill and ability than the world's capitalists and their governments are able to provide.

This is the kind of future that leads to uprising. It is the kind of future that leads to riots and even revolution. I hope the G20 leaders, isolated as they are from real life by their power and wealth, do not underestimate the amount of anger there is among the people they have been exploiting for so long. That crowd of 35,000 in London is the tip of an iceberg of resentment and disgust. It could easily turn from a peaceful march with reasonable requests into a furious mob, burning effigies and storming the parliament.

It's All About The Guns, Stupid

Another damned mass murder, this time in Winnenden in Germany.

The boy who did it was described by Heribert Rech, interior minister of Baden-Wuerttemberg state as "completely unremarkable, there was nothing in his background to suggest this could have happened." Except the boy was a trained marksman! Except he had access to firearms! Except that he was an isolated loner who played computer games all day!

For God's sake, wake up! If you give weapons and training to disturbed children, some of them are going to go nuts and shoot people.

Here's a simple way to stop young men from shooting their classmates: don't let them anywhere near guns! It isn't hard. It isn't rocket science. If you give kids guns, they will shoot people. Incidentally, the same goes for grown-ups.

And while I'm ranting on the subject, how is it we can, as a society, spend billions setting up evesdropping services like the famous Eschelon, that listen to everybody's phone calls and read everybody's emails, trying to protect us from the extremely minor 'threat' of terrorism, but we can't use the same technology to monitor the Web for kids who openly brag that they are going to shoot their classmates? Like the German killer-nutcase did seven hours before he went on the rampage in Winnenden- and as so many others do. If we're going to lose all our privacy to the NSA and MI5 anyway, why can't they at least do something useful with their supercomputers like stopping assholes shooting children.

End of rant. Thank you for your patience.

More hope than you can shake a stick at

(Cross-posted from my writing blog)

Remember that four-part magazine I told you about - put together by speculative fiction fans and full of stories and artwork donated by Australian writers and artists? Well, the first edition has now been published.

All the money raised by the sale of this magazine will go towards the disaster relief fund for the survivors of the recent catastrophic bush fires in South-Eastern Australia. So get out your credit cards and visit this page to make your donation and get your copy. I've seen the first edition and it is astonishingly good - packed to the rafters with the work of top-notch writers and illustrators. The quality is so high, you'd want to buy it anyway.

To get out a magazine like this in just a couple of weeks is an astonishing achievement. My hat is off to Grant Watson, Ju Landéesse and Maia Bobrowicz, who made it happen - and to all the many Australian spec fic writers and artists who contributed. For the likes of me, giving away a story doesn't cost a great deal - since I don't get paid so much for them - but for some of the big-name contributors, this represents a significant donation. Make sure this generosity isn't in vain, order your copy of Hope #1 now. In fact, why not order all four of them?

Death and Suffering in Australia

At the time of writing, the bush-fires that are still burning in south-eastern Australia have claimed 173 lives, with hundreds more injured and almost a thousand homes burnt down. It is Australia's largest natural disaster ever. Whole towns have been wiped out. Whole families.

Up in the north-east, there are record floods. Some towns have been cut off for weeks. Several people have died, several more are missing. Homes have been wrecked, businesses devastated, crops are standing under water, choked with mud.

I've got no point to make, no axe to grind. I just want to acknowledge this terrible moment of suffering and grief, this horror, literally all around me.

What Kind of Twit Twitters?

Well, you're about to find out. Look near the bottom of the left-hand column and you'll find my new twitter stream.

I've been resisting Twitter for quite a while now. Honestly, it just looks like a waste of bits. Yet so many people rave about it - people I would otherwise think quite highly of - that I suppose I ought to give it a go.

First impressions:

1. It's easier to do than I expected. I just leave the Twitter page open and type a quick burst of rubbish into it when it occurs to me to do so. The 140 character limit is actually a big help here. It stops me being as prolix as I'd like and therefore saves me from wasting so much time.

2. I'm just as likely to type in a random thought as to answer the question 'What are you doing?' which is supposed to be what it's all about. Maybe my random thoughts will be more interesting than the fact that I'm just off to have lunch. Twitter says its for the bits of your life in between blogs and emails. Well, maybe for me it's for the bits of my mind in between more coherent utterances.

3. Even after just half-a-dozen twitterings, the whole is looking far more interesting than the parts. Maybe a twitter stream is going to be a far more valuable and entertaining read than each individual utterance.

4. The word 'twitter' is very irritating. It's like 'twitcher'. An individual twitter entry should be called a 'twitch'. Maybe the next big thing will be like twitter but with a ten word limit. We could call that a 'tick'.

Anyhoo, I'll try it for a while and see what it comes to. Maybe I'll enjoy this mental twitching enough to keep at it for a while. If you're one of the twitterati (a twitcher,) then follow my twitchings by clicking the 'Follow me on Twitter' link at the bottom of my twitchings.

If you can bear it.

Stop Cheering For Obama

Yes, I know it's really nice that Obama's going to be president in a few hours - almost as nice as the fact that it won't be Bush - but I can't help feeling nervous.

After all, the USA is the place where a significant number of voters at the last election believed Obama was a Muslim. It's the place where people are rushing out to buy guns because they worry that Obama will tighten the law to make it harder to get them. It's the place with the largest body of people anywhere outside a Muslim country that believes the Bible is the literal word of God. It's also the country that just trashed the world economy by allowing inept capitalists to go unregulated and unchecked for so many years.

Yes, Obama seems sensible and reasonable, but he's not God and he's not Dictator of America. As the global depression deepens through 2009 and 2010, Obama will be as helpless as all the other world leaders to do much about it.

That's when the crowds that are cheering him today - out of work by then, their savings gone, and their homes repossessed - will most likely turn on him like a pack of dogs and rip out his throat.

I'd rather he was inaugurated without all this razzmatazz and with far, far fewer expectations. Then people might feel gratitude for the good things he does (and I'm sure he'll do as much good as is humanly possible) instead of feeling disappointment and hostility about the things he couldn't do.

Oh yes, and please, America, don't assassinate this one.

Madoff Treated Kindly By His Friends

A poor kid in New York who robs a liquor store and gets away with $50 would almost certainly be locked up pending trial. So how come self-confessed, $50 billion thief Bernard Madoff is under 'house arrest' in his $7 million New York apartment and not in remand? Does he have 'friends' at the Justice Department as well as at the Securities Exchange Commission?

Or is this because scum like Madoff ought to be treated better than poor kids who rob shops? Is that the reasoning? White collar crime seems to be considered OK while blue collar crime is not. It probably all boils down to the fact that establishment figures like Madoff are looked after by their own kind when their crimes are discovered. After all, it could happen to anybody in the corporate world these days. Who among them isn't doing a bit of insider trading, or cheating on their taxes, or running a little scam or two? And the big names in the corporate world are members of the same families who are running for 'high' office, sitting on the judicial benches, running the churches, and promoting each other in the armed services.

Corruption among the 'power elite' mostly goes unnoticed and uncommented. We don't see the handshakes, the nods and winks, and the seedy little conspiracies. When we do, we accept the mechanisms of privilege and preferment, even while the Gucci loafer is grinding down on our necks. Mostly, the people involved don't even realise just how corrupt they have become. But sometimes, when a case like Madoff's comes to light, we can see the elite in action.

It doesn't matter how many thousands of people have lost their pensions (and in America, that is no joke at all!) It doesn't matter how many thousands more have had the pittances they could scrape together after years of hard work, the plans and dreams that might have depended on those pittances, grabbed from them and trashed. It doesn't matter that charitable trusts and philanthropic funds had their investments in Madoff's companies, and that all the good they could have done will never now be achieved. No. Madoff is one of the boys and his mates will make sure he isn't treated in an undignified manner. After all, there but for the grace of God...

Disgusting creatures like Madoff are thick as flies these days. From the CEOs who award themselves fat 'bonuses' while their workers are being laid off to pay for it, to the out-and-out theives who find even the laissez-faire economic regulation of corporate America doesn't give them enough opportunity to satisfy their greed, the pigs are stuffing themselves at the trough.

Our global economy has a serious problem with corruption. Unfortunately, the people who have the power to do something about it - ordinary voters - are too stupid and ignorant to take the appropriate action.

Australian Labor Party Continues to Disappoint

While I'm moaning on about the Australian Labor Party's support for religious fundamentalist and moral pigmy James Bidgood and how this reflects on the party's ethics, I should also mention the new Internet censorship laws they're about to introduce.

Ostensibly a measure to filter out child pornography, Australia's new net censorship laws will allow the government to manage a blacklist of all the sites it does not want Australians to see and ensure that ISPs block them. The list has not been made public and, as far as I know, never will be. They simply want us to trust them that they're acting in our best interests and 'only' offensive sites will be censored.

Well I don't trust governments to know what is in my best interest (or the best interest of my children) and I certainly don't trust them to censor only offensively pornographic sites. It will only be a matter of time before political sites are on the blacklist (if they are not already). If you give the government the power to control the Internet, you no longer have freedom of information or freedom of speech. If you no longer have freedom of speech, you no longer have democracy. If you don't have democracy, you're stuffed.

The government may even think it is trying to do the right thing with this terrible law but it is not. It is creating the technical and political infrastructure that will allow totalitarian regimes to control our access to information.

This appalling state of affairs is barely mentioned in the media but it is not slipping by unnoticed. A series of protest marches is being organised for 13th November and I urge everyone who can to get out on the streets and let the Australian Labor Party and Kevin Rudd know what we think about this monstrous threat to our freedom.

As for what this says about the moral integrity of the Labor Party, someone calling themselves 'Megaport' writing on the geek site Slashdot put it very nicely. I quote him or her in full:

Just as the USA have lost their moral right to castigate countries who use torture as a tool of statecraft, so too has Australia now given up her right to criticise those authoritarian regimes who would limit the freedom of communication of their citizens.

Given that all the experts (yes, ALL the experts) agree that it won't stop anyone who actually traffics in this despicable content from peddling their filth even for a moment, can anyone here tell me what else we're buying for the price of our moral high ground on this issue?

China will be laughing their socks off at us next time we try to mention the censorship of news and internet in their country - no matter what language our leaders speak the message in.

The point about the ineffectiveness of the measure is actually a good one since there will be many ways for people who actually want child porn to get around it. So you have to ask yourself just why Kevin Rudd wants to go ahead and do this. It can only be that his government would like the general ability to censor material of which it disapproves.

Why is Bidgood Still in Parliament?

The House of Representatives Speaker says there should be no further action against James Bidgood, the religious fundamentalist MP who took a photograph of a man trying to set himself on fire and then sold the image.

This incredible conclusion was reached after the man's actions were investigated and, apparently, were found not to have interfered with 'the security situation' - whatever that means. The point is, Bidgood is clearly unfit for office - not just because of his radical religious fundamentalism - but because he has the morality of a jackall. If you see a man trying to burn himslef to death, you try to stop him. You don't take pictures. You don't try to sell the pictures afterwards. What kind of moral imbecile could think this was an appropriate course of action?

That Kevin Rudd, leader of the federal Labor Party, hasn't dismissed this moral earthworm is a serious reflection on Rudd's own character and on the state of the Australian Labor Party. I am ashamed of my government. I am ashamed of the party I have supported for so long. We got used to being ashamed of the government during the John 'lying weasel' Howard years, but I thought Kevin Rudd was going to change all that. Now what I'm seeing is the same kind of moral bankruptcy being supported by and tacitly encouraged by Kevin Rudd.

It is an absolute disgrace and a terrible disappointment that Bidgood is being defended and protected by his party.

Whoah! Nutter on the loose!

Here is an article from the Australian Online dated 4th December 2008 and attributed to Samantha Maiden.

LABOR MP James Bidgood, the first-time MP under investigation for selling pictures of a protester attempting to set fire to himself outside Parliament House, has declared the global financial crisis an act of God.

Mr Bidgood, who was carpeted by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd over his actions yesterday and apologised to Parliament, makes the new claims in a DVD, The Australian reports.

In a speech to a function held in Parliament he argues that Christian marches for Jesus in London caused the October 1987 stock market crash.

He also predicted the end of the world and one world monetary system.

"We have to say 'What would Jesus do?'," he said.

"In 1987 there was another march for Jesus. That took place in April. And guess what happened in October 1987? The stock market crashed. All property values lost one this of their value and over a million people lost their homes.

"I believe when Christians pray, God does things. I believe what is happening today is as much to do with God in economics bringing judgement."

He went on to warn that "there is God's justice in action in what has gone on here".

"I believe there is God's justice in action in what is going on here. We haven't seen the end of it.

"The ultimate conclusion is like I say, we look at Bible prophecy, we are going towards a one world bank and a one world monetary system. And if you believe the word of God and you read Revelations...you will see clearly what is being spelt out. We in the end times."

There are two things to note about this article. First is that it is choc-full of typos. This article was never proofread, probably not edited at all. From the number of glaringly obvious mistakes in the piece, Samantha Maiden didn't even read it over herself. It's atrocious! This really is not the standard that we expect from a national newspaper. It's not the standard we expect from a local free paper! This is just rubbish and the Australian and Ms Maiden should be ashamed. Australia should be ashamed!

The second is that Labor MP James Bidgood (yes, the Australian Labor Party really does spell its name that way!) is clearly a certifiable nutcase. The financial crisis is a punishment from God? And it happened because Christians prayed for it? People like this need psychiatric help. They are clearly unfit to hold jobs as burger-flippers, let alone MPs. Did he tell his constituents what a loony he is before they elected him, I wonder? Did he say, 'Vote for me guys, I'm a gibbering idiot who thinks Revelations is literally true?' Or 'I'm going to pray that millions of Australians lose their houses and their jobs because you all deserve it for being evil and, anyway, it's the end of the world soon, so there?' (Or whatever barmy nonsense this moron believes.)

Jeez, what with newspapers that can't string a sentence together and politicians who are scarily deranged, maybe we really in the end times after all.